Platzeck New Head of Supervisory Board

Berlin,
17.01.2013

In a meeting on 16 January 2013, the Supervisory Board of Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH unanimously decided the following personnel appointments:

Matthias Platzeck, Prime Minister of the State of Brandenburg, will be the new Chairman of the Supervisory Board. He succeeds Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor of Berlin, who held this office since 2001. Wowereit will in future be Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board. Rainer Bomba, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Transport, will chair the Supervisory Board project committee. He succeeds Ralf Christophers, who was until now the committee’s chairman. Christophers continues as a member of the Supervisory Board in his capacity as a representative of the State of Brandenburg.

Management reshuffle

At the same time, the Supervisory Board decided to reorganise the company management. Prof. Dr. Rainer Schwarz, since 2006 CEO and Commercial Director, has been dismissed with immediate effect. In future a triumvirate will head the company. Platzeck announced that interviews will soon be held with candidates for the positions of Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer to complete the Executive Board.

Platzeck: “Shareholders all pulling together”

“The Supervisory Board meeting today demonstrated the common will of the three shareholders, the German government, Berlin and Brandenburg, to haul the company back out of the deep water it is currently in: We are all pulling together,” said new Supervisory Board Chairman Platzeck during the press conference called to cover the Supervisory Board meeting. “Over the coming months, we aim to put complete our appraisal of the situation at Berlin Brandenburg Airport, the most important project for the future of eastern Germany, so that we can then establish a realistic and reliable schedule for the successful completion of all outstanding work on the airport through to its opening. To this end, the Supervisory Board will be called upon to make some tough decisions and to exercise tighter control of the company. At today’s Supervisory Board meeting, we have now taken the first steps to realign the company and BER.“

Next steps on the BER construction site

Platzeck also stressed that there was at present no point in setting a date for the opening of the airport. “Chief Operating Officer Horst Amann first needs to perform an in-depth analysis of the problems before he can name a date. This is going to take some months.”

Getting Schönefeld and Tegel into shape for the future

As well as discussing the current situation on the construction site of Berlin Brandenburg Airport, the Supervisory Board also touched on the future of Schönefeld and Tegel Airports at the meeting. “We clearly need to invest, especially in Tegel. What we are talking about here is definitely a euro figure in the two-digit million range. Berlin Airports is now set to compile a proposal package for approval by its airline customers, which will shortly be presented to the public,” says Platzeck.